Brands vs. Members

Understanding the difference between Brands and Members is crucial to getting the most out of AE. Keep reading to learn why!

What is a Member?

A new member is added to your dashboard every time someone signs into your website, signs up for your newsletter or enters into a contest using AE Connect.

Therefore, every person in your dashboard is a member.

Over time, AE collects relevant data about your members. This data grows as members engage in social media and connect more of their social media accounts (via social login).

The usefulness of AE depends on your members. You will be using your members as a jumping-off point for many of your business tasks, such as:

Using segments and groups of members. For example, you can use AE to find members who watch a lot of DIY videos and target them specifically.

Filtering members by specific types of data. One example of this is using AE to select your segment of members who have paid Spotify accounts.

Creating micro-targeted ad campaigns. For instance, you can create a new ad audience with members who haven’t listened to your artist’s new album yet.

Find your most engaged audience. Quickly sort your members to find those with the highest engagement score.

Select members who opt in to your brands’ email newsletter. You can import new subscribers from AE to Mailchimp or Salesforce.

What is a Brand?

A brand can be a property that you own (like your own coffee shop) or a property that belongs to a competitor (your worst enemy’s coffee shop).

You are in charge of adding applicable brands to your dashboard. It does not happen automatically.

So if you were a record label, your brands would be the artists under your label as well as anything else you want to keep track of. This could be similar artists under other labels, potential sponsors, etc.

Here’s where it gets a bit muddy.

AE tracks key behaviors that your members exhibit against the brands you’ve put into Appreciation Engine.

For example, each time a fan uses the artist’s primary hashtag, that action is stored in AE.

Having up-to-date and complete lists of brands makes a big difference in terms of the value of the data.

Best Practices for Adding Brands

We want you to get the most out of every brand that you add. Here are a few recommendations to keep in mind whenever you add a new brand:

Create brands for properties that you do not own. Create brands for your competitors, potential sponsors, partners, or any other key brands that interest your business.

Add as much detail as you can for each brand. The more detail we have around a brand, the deeper Appreciation Engine’s tracking can go. The deeper the tracking, the better your data will be.

Double-check that all the information you’ve added is correct. You don’t want to be tracking the wrong brand or a meaningless typo.

Hopefully, you have a better idea now of the differences between brands and members.